Come Follow Me with Sam

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! I have combined the last two weeks as they are some of the last words Alma gives, and some very fascinating scriptures! Alma is a man of many sides. He was a rebel, an apostate, a (re)convert, a chief judge, a high priest, a warrior, a missionary, a seeker of the greater things, and a poet, among other things. I have decided to go through these scriptures talking to some of these sides. Was Alma teaching a pattern with the order he put these teachings in? Alma is a sneaky guy. You think you have him figured out and bam! 150 years later we realize that he has perfect symmetrical pattern in his first chapter to his sons (36). Isaiah does a similar thing on a monstrously large scale. So here is a thought I am just throwing out there. Do you think that Alma 36 wasn't the only trick he through in the book? Do you think he followed a similar literary structure throughout the chapters? there's 7 of them, just sayin... 1. Alma 36 - Call to repentan...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! And welcome to the mission to the Zoramites! This section is so interesting because it actually started as a way to attenuate a more political/military movement by building people spiritually. It ended up instead bringing the downtrodden out of the culture. The Zoramites really twisted religion up, so this section is cool because it teaches some principles of the gospel very simply in a basics course correct. I would like to highlight 2 areas. The first is Alma's lecture on faith.. The second is his comments on prayer. Lets take a closer look at Alma 32 and faith This is where the famous scripture comes from - if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true. There are some important contexts to extract before we should say we get what Alma is saying. I may compare this to Moroni 7 later.  Alma first establishes that God wants to you believe. he desires that you should believe, and particularly on his word.  So how do w...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We have two chapters this week. One is korihor the anti-Christ, one is the folly of the Zoramites and a prayer for them. We'll see how Korihor is a really sneaky man, like a nibbler trying to eat the foundation. Hopefully we can use this to see more clearly. Korihor the bore Korihor is an anti-Christ of the vanilla kind. People like him have been wandering the earth since the days of Adam with basically the same arguments. If you look at Korihor's arguments, they actually seem inconsequential and childish. I believe he is using a disorienting trick that I will get into later. For now, look at what he puts. He says the people are bound down under a foolish and vain hope, why do you yoke yourselves? Notice how he is basically making assertions and selling them as pre-built assumptions. Binding down under a foolish and vain hope isn't really the deal. It is not what we are going for. If you told that to Abinidai, he would say, wow, you don...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! Wow, there is so much that happens in these short chapters. It is really hard to keep up and understand. These chapters are like a secret window into understanding the psyche of the Anti-Nephi-Lehis, the sons of Ammon, and Alma! Really valuable stuff. Why did the Anti-Nephi-Lehis/Ammonites not fight? One thing we can see about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis - they knew the thanksgiving way. I can't think of anyone more truly converted than these people. There is a certain purity without complication or guile to the lives they decided to live. Remember that these people regularly killed Nephites and each other. King Lamoni was troubled because of all the Nephites and Lamanites he had killed and that was why he was afraid of Ammon at first. rebels in his kingdom were not afraid to kill either. This was not a nice place to live. Well, they rejected all of that once they converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Here's an interesting thing to think about th...

Welcome to Come Follow me with Sam! Its MISSIONARY TIME! Technically it was already missionary time, since Alma 1. but this is where the great story of the missionary work among the Lamanites starts. I'm going to hit on a few highlights we don't think about much, instead of talking about the main points of the story. If you don't know this story yet, I highly encourage you to read it before continuing :) Preparation for this work happened long before the sons of Mosiah came Amulon, as bad a dude as he was, and as bad as his posterity persecuted the work, was actually a secret ingredient to this missionary secret ingredient soup. In Mosiah 24, it says that he appointed teachers to teach the Lamanites the Nephite language, writing, record-keeping, and trade. In essence, he began the re-melding of the culture so that the Nephites and the Lamanites could understand one another. I'm pretty sure this was a major contributor to the success of the missionary work here. The Sons...

Welcome to Come Follow Me with Sam! We are doing a combo of two weeks so that we get the Ammonihah experience end to end. (also because I am still catching up :D) Things get a little crazy here! Ammonihah is doing really bad things. Alma sees an angel. Amulek changes his entire life around (!!!) Wow. Here's the stuff. Ammonihah round 1 Alma goes from Gideon to Melek and from Melek from Ammonihah. The preaching in both Gideon and Melek went fantastic. Ammonihah is a complete dead-end. No one listens and he gets cast out.If I were him, I would pat myself on the back and say 'good effort, let's go to some place that has a greater spiritual return on my life investment'. Alma doesn't respond exactly that way, but he does decide his work is done. The difference is that it gives him 'weighed down with sorrow, wading through much tribulation and anguish of soul. Remember that Alma himself rebelled pretty hardcore against the church. When he sees someone turn away, I th...